Content Marketing and the CTA: Stop Flirting and Get a Room

Save the flirting for the barstool. Your marketing content should be as bold as a hooker with a mortgage. Yes, you’re attracted. Yes, you’re ready to hook up. Yes, you have a condom in your shoe.

When you have a specific goal in mind for those reading your marketing content, don’t play coy. Spell it out by adding a call-to-action.

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Make it clear that your address on the Internet is a consensual space – both parties should benefit from the give and take.

Ask for What You Want

Maybe you want to encourage visitors to your blog to subscribe to your podcasts? Maybe you wish more readers would share your witty offerings to Tumblr and Twitter? And wouldn’t it be great if visitors left their email addresses behind so you could launch a more effective and far-reaching marketing campaign?

Indeed it would.

But you might never know if you don’t ask.

Make it as easy as possible for visitors to your site to do exactly what you desire by taking them boldly by the hand, leading them to the bed, and satisfying them with the stamina of your awesome marketing prowess.

Creating quality content never felt so good.

This is what’s referred to in the business as adding a call-to-action, and it serves a single purpose: To encourage a conversion.

Add Content Links to Cement the Deal

Once you’ve caught your reader’s interest, finalize the transaction by hyperlinking the text to your CTAs. According to the Content Marketing Institute, a simple path to conversion is best. Making readers click through multiple links to get where they want to go is a no-no. Every frustrated reader is a lost conversion, and that’s the one debacle you want most to avoid.

But just linking to your call-to-action isn’t enough. Where you place it on the page is important too. Your most important CTA – the BIG one – goes in the upper right corner in what newspaper editors used to call “the space above the fold.” This is the corner where the most action occurs – the Bourbon Street of web addresses – if you will. Whatever content you place here will experience the wonders of Mardi Gras all day long.

Zoom In for the Money Shot

Once you’ve attracted your reader, impressed him with your content marketing skills, and guided him to click-through conversion, it’s time to sit back and reap the rewards. Maybe you’ve successfully subscribed him to your blog. Maybe you’ve just sold him your e-book. Maybe you’ve convinced him to sign up for your next paid webinar.

Maybe you only inspired him to leave a comment.

But he did exactly what you wanted him to do, and that’s good, effective marketing.